English Rendering of Chinese Medical Terms in a Diachronic Context: a Lexical Typological Perspective

Abstract

The present study is an attempt to locate the diachronic differences in how traditional Chinese medical terms are rendered into English by comparing and contrasting two English versions of 39 key traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) terms published in 1883 and 2000 respectively. The result shows that the past century has witnessed drastic change in translating traditional Chinese medical terms into the English language, with a number of originally explanatory, domesticated or mismatched terms eventually replaced by contemporary foreignized calques and even transliterations. Such diachronic change in TCM terminological translation strategies can be explained within the colexification model of lexical typology. The analysis also demonstrates that the similarity in colexification patterns across both languages play an important role in the translator’s choice of target lexemes for the source term.